


Run, Hide, Fight (Show Me Going)

by packrat



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Angst, B99 Summer 2019 Fic Exchange, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, PTSD flashbacks, Panic, Show me going, What Rosa experienced in the active shooter situation, angsty, b99 - Freeform, description of vomiting, mild description of death, sleuth sisters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-02 12:58:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20276296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/packrat/pseuds/packrat
Summary: the night after the active shooter situation in Brooklyn Heights Hotel Rosa wakes up from a nightmare that she soon realizes was not a nightmare at all





	Run, Hide, Fight (Show Me Going)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fielding](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fielding/gifts).

> this is for @vernonfielding on tumblr and based of the general prompt of “Rosa’s POV from Show Me Going or post-ep. What went down? Did she ever talk to anyone about it after?” I was excited about receiving the prompt because I was already working on exactly that thing!! I really hope you like it 💛 (it got way more angsty than I ever anticipated it to be)

She chokes on air and her body shoots up straight. Her breaths are short and shallow and she can’t get that _damn_ oxygen to enter her lungs. 

She’s clawing at the bedsheets, her right hand moving up and then clawing at the skin on her arm, desperate to feel something. Anything. 

Her dream felt so real and it’s then she realizes that it was. That her mind is not playing cruel tricks on her this time. 

_Rosa stands in front of the Brooklyn Heights Hotel after all nearby officers were requested to respond to the active shooter situation and it’s not how she saw her day pan out. _

_That morning she was still furious and angry at Gina for not fixing the toilet on their floor, like she asked her to. She had to go use the bathroom on the floor below her, had a slight altercation with a female beat cop and now she finds herself in this situation. _

_She has never been close enough to respond to an active shooter situation. Never had anything to lose either. _

_”Diaz, 3118, show me going”, she requests before the reality of the situation sets in. She might die today. She might die, she might die, she is going to die. _

_”3118, I have you going”, the response comes almost immediately. It’s then that someone updates her on what happened so far. _ Two shooters, possibly three. Multiple wounded. Three dead. All civilians. _It’s a hostage situation on top of it all._

Bile rises up in her throat and Rosa hauls herself out of bed just in time to throw up into the shower. Her pulse quickens as her back hits the shower wall hard. Rosa turns the shower head on. 

And then she’s sliding to the ground. Falling to the ground in a mess of tears and vomit and panic and sweat and fear.

Her cheeks come in contact with the cold tile floor and her sight becomes hazy and unfocused. She feels her body shiver slightly. The cold water running down her face. 

Still, it seems she can’t pull herself out of this flashback. 

_Everything after being sent inside is blurred into one big mess. She remembers turning off her phone, the messages and phone calls already piling up. She remembers ignoring them, stuffing her phone into a pocket close to her body. _

_Someone assigns her a group and she follows blindly. They’re supposed to check the second floor, then the third. And everything is clear. _

_Until it’s not. And an officer gets shot right in front of her. _

Rosa screams like she would have done in that moment.

_She doesn’t know if it’s the shock or what else but she is frozen in place. _That could’ve have been her._. She doesn’t scream, instead just stops in her tracks and stares because the officer that’s been shot looks an awful lot like Amy. _

_Why didn’t she see that before?_

_She can’t tear her eyes away but there’s so much blood she feels like she’s drowning in it and suddenly her body moves to touch the officer’s face but she’s being held back. “Diaz, we have to move on!”, someone shouts and she nods. _

Amy!

It’s like she’s forgotten that she’s seen Amy just hours prior. Amy, who tried fixing the fourth floor toilet and forcing Gina to be part of it. Amy, who hugged her in her toilet water soaked shirt. Amy, who might have even cried a few tears. And Rosa, who held her, mostly staring blankly ahead. 

Rosa’s eyes fly open and with the remainder of her energy she crawls back into her bedroom, blindly searching for her phone lost in her sheets. Her body is soaked but she doesn’t care, can’t care, doesn’t really know that water is dripping all over the linoleum floor. As soon as she finds her phone, she dials Amy’s number. 

“Rosa?”, the younger woman’s voice appears after only two rings. Rosa doesn’t answer. She allows herself to cry instead. 

The tears come silently first. 

“Are you okay, Rosa?”

They turn into heaving sobs fast. And then screaming again as the picture of the dead officer forces itself into her mind again. 

‘Amy is alive!’, she reminds herself but at the same time her brain is telling her that Amy is most definitely dead. That she had seen Amy die today. 

The detective’s body is mourning for someone who is most definitely not dead yet, who she is on the phone with right that second. 

‘Amy is alive!’, she reminds herself. Again and again and again. And still, the picture of the dead officer is burnt into her memory, leaving a bitter aftertaste. 

Alive. Dead. Alive. Dead. Alive. 

“I’m coming over!”, Amy exclaims as Rosa lets her phone fall to the floor and darts back into the bathroom, throwing up into her shower once again. 

_They move on, one of the men in her group reporting that one officer is down. 9238. Warwick. They don’t encounter the shooter again, but the picture of Amy bleeding out in front of her eyes is seared into her memory forever. _

Then everything goes black. 

When she comes to, cold fingertips are stroking her cheek and feel her temperature on her forehead. Rosa feels like she can’t open her eyes, so she doesn’t. 

She feels cold. Her body shaking and shivering and her clothes stick to her in an unusual way. 

“Rosa”, Amy’s voice breaks through the haziness of her mind and she’s not sure if she’s playing tricks on herself. Amy’s dead. Alive but dead but alive.

But dead. 

She cautiously opens her eyes and the young sergeant comes into view. 

Alive. Dead. Alive. 

Rosa feels the panic rising up again. Like poison ivy that’s feeding off the darkness inside of her ever since she had to go to prison. Like poison ivy that wants to burst through her rib cage and swallow her whole. Like poison ivy that crawls up her throat and wants to always go up up up through her mouth and nose and eyes. 

“You’re - you’re dead”, Rosa gets out, heaving, between heavy tears, burning hot on her cheeks as oxygen is once again unable to enter her lungs and the poison ivy that is feeding off the used air inside of her. She wants to explain to Amy what she means but the words get stuck in her throat. 

She throws up once again.

She starts crying. Silent tears this time. Hating herself for crying in front of her friend. Hating herself for showing weakness where weakness doesn’t belong.

“Rosa”, Amy takes her hand but all of Rosa’s limbs feel numb and she feels paralyzed. Frozen. “I’m here. You’re here. We’re both alive.” The voice, Amy (Rosa has to remind herself), pauses and then “you’re not in there anymore. You are in your apartment and it’s 5 in the morning. You are in your bathroom. And we are both alive.”

She doesn’t know how long it takes but when she doesn’t see the dead Amy-not-Amy in front of her anymore, doesn’t feel her dying right in front of her eyes, she’s dressed in fresh, dry, clothing and laying in bed. 

And Amy is holding her. 

“The officer that’s been shot”, Rosa whispers so quietly that Amy was sure if she wasn't holding her breath she would not hear it, “she looked like you. And in my mind she was you.”

Amy pulls the exhausted body closer, hands going through Rosa’s locks, lightly scraping her skull. “I’m alive”, she reassures the detective. 

A couple minutes later the sergeant gets up. “I’m right in the next room. Won’t take long”, Amy tells her. The light footsteps stop mere meters behind the closed bedroom door and Rosa can make out the distant voice of the younger woman, suspecting she’s on a call right now. 

When Amy returns and crawls back under the covers Rosa’s mind registers the time. The panic starts to rise again. 

“You need to get up, Amy”, she tells the sergeant but Amy shakes her head, one arm outstretched, offering the safety of her embrace. 

“I called in sick for us both. Holt understands”, she explains sleepily. 

Rosa considers this for a second and then inches closer so Amy can wrap her arm around her body. 

And for the first time since she’s been back home, Rosa finally falls into a peaceful slumber herself.


End file.
